Garden & Allotment Stuff

This last week or so has been a flurry of visitors, visiting and being places. The bank holidays – and with them the end of April and the passing of all ‘those’ dates have flown by. I think they are not really the same for us, given in the Spring and Summer we can please ourselves work wise more of less, but the things we’ve done and people we’ve seen have been lovely. More on that later I think. I’m massively behind on ‘everyday life’ blogging again, so I’ve got a lot to catch up on. I can’t really even think where I got to.

We’ve spent a bit of time at the allotment; I’m hoping the rather pessimistic local who wandered over to tell us of damage done in previous years by local kids will not amount to much; it would be a shame if we got vandalised. For now, we’re going for a sort of square foot gardening but without the squares, the feet or the special compost approach 😆 By which I mostly mean small patches of veg with paths between them so we don’t get overwhelmed. The girls have been really involved and very helpful so far, even doing bits of weeding to get rid of the insanely quick growing thistles.

We’ve planted potatoes and onions and garlic and parsnips and leeks and carrots and sweetcorn and peas. Having now heard of youths who tend to trample, we’re waiting to see a bit. In fairness, the person who offered me the allotment has his there and said he doesn’t have problems but I’m not sure what to make of one person saying that and a resident talking about serious vandalism on the same plot. It’s taken the shine off it a bit.

In the garden the early potatoes in pots are getting huge already, the courgettes and on to their second and third sets of leaves, the herbs are filling out and the peas are climbing. The early carrots have sprouted a good bit (and may yet have to been thinned or somehow transplanted, though I seem to recall that doesn’t work very well) and the radishes are looking good and the spring onions are doing their thing.

We need to find something we want to eat every day that has Fennel in it- that plant is like a triffid!!!

Indoors the tomato seedlings are still tiny but I’m going to need to work out what on earth some of the other things are as I somehow omitted to label them! We may have to do a blog identification post 😆 There is an awful lot of it all though, so I really hope the allotment does work out.

Max made me a quick trellis for a climber that my lovely friend Claire bought us last year. We didn’t get organised and it broke but it has bounced back this year, despite only having a cane and a piece of string to work with. Now it has a lovely little bit of DIY to decorate.

There is a wooden frame over the back door next to it that we are hoping it will climb across and one on the other side (which also broke but which is also recovering well) which he is going to build something for next week.

The garden is having a bit of a morning after the night before week; it still has its Spring make up on, but the mascara has run a bit and the lip gloss is all smudgy. The tulips have got blown and blowsy but are still glorious. I have never loved Spring flowers so much as I have this year.

The best thing right now is the sight of the foxgloves hurtling upwards. Another week or so and they’ll be out and being glorious. These ones travelled with us from several houses ago; a few plants hopped across with a veg pot full of soil that didn’t get cleaned out and seeded themselves around the garden. I love them and they remind me of Devon in the early Summer from our holiday last year too.

I’d love to be the type of gardener who create works of art in plants but I don’t think I ever will be. What I enjoy is seeing that a small amount of effort, in a garden like ours, can make it feel like an extension of the home; there are pots of things we’ve put time and thought into, alongside sandpits that even the big girls still dabble in, rabbits who make it their home, and flowers and trees we planted to remember. So much of this little space is part of a precious journey now, almost more so than anything in the house. And that is a good thing.